A Match Made for Murder by Iona Whishaw (top 10 best books of all time txt) 📗

Tina’s is very cold at the moment, and he feels, not without reason, that he’s made a mess of everything.”

“Poor Tina! An experience like that at sixteen and having to soldier through it for the rest of her life only to have it all exposed in this horrible way. No wonder she’s angry; she has felt no control over any of it, either then or now.”

“Is that what is making her angry, do you think? Having no control, not just Ames’s inept approach to the whole thing? I never considered that,” Darling said thoughtfully.

“It would make me angry. In fact, I’d say not having control of their own lives in general is what makes women angry. Into every woman’s life a bungling official must fall, but not being able to be in charge of how she gets to deal with it must be absolutely infuriating. And in Tina’s case, she was barely out of childhood, and has spent all those years finding a way to live with this horrible experience, and then it all comes spilling out for everyone to see.”

Darling was silent, digesting this. It was a new, discomfiting thought to him. How much control men had of their own lives, and those of others, and how little many women had by contrast. Lane had worked hard to regain control of her life, from her family, from British Intelligence, from her manipulative wartime lover, Angus Dunn. He felt a flush of gratitude at her agreeing to give up any measure of her independence to marry him, for suddenly it seemed the greatest gift he’d ever received.

“A man like Galloway,” Lane said, interrupting Darling’s thoughts, “abuses his wife, dismisses the suffering of a young girl. That is the stuff of a bad man. I wonder, don’t you know, if there’s more. What’s on those photos Priscilla took? I almost can’t imagine how a man who behaves that way toward women could be honest. If he already believes he has a right to behave that way to his wife, he must believe he has the right to other things as well—the petty cash, for example, or anything in his police station or even his town.”

“Can I interject into this brilliant analysis, that I love you?”

She smiled. “You always say that.”

“I always mean it, now more than ever. I’ve been wondering something similar,” Darling said. “I’ve been wondering why he really left Nelson. Looking back, his departure now seems somewhat precipitous—though I may be imagining that because of what I’m learning. Ames may have stumbled, in his puppy dog way, into a useful thought: he wondered if Galloway’s gambling was an issue and if the thoroughly repellent man who is now the corpse in the case Ames is working gambled with him.”

“That might account for why Galloway sent Tina off with a flea in her ear.”

“Exactly. I still can’t get over how spectacularly wrong I was about him. How could I, even as young and callow as I was, be fooled by a slick, arrogant man like that?”

“Darling, I wouldn’t spend a single calorie worrying about that. You are with a woman who wasted years on a man just like that. I think it’s a good indication that being dazzled and fooled can happen to anybody. In fact,” she said, brightening, “anybody who is young and optimistic and wants to believe only the good in the world. The trick, I think, is not to be embittered by the experience, but to be able—though older, sadder, wiser—to still love someone and be optimistic in their company.”

“Is that you saying you love me?”

“It could well be,” she said, getting up and kissing him gently on the top of the head. “I’m going to take this book back and look for a quick Agatha Christie. Then I think we should consider going somewhere in town for a bit of a sight-see and some lunch at one of these Mexican places. We’ve not much time left here.”

Terrell and Ames were at a window booth at the café.

“I can see why you always get the grilled ham and cheese sandwich. It’s hard to beat,” Terrell said, making rapid inroads on his. He was looking forward to April coming to tell them what sort of pie they had on today.

“Funny Galloway being in the very place the boss has gone for his honeymoon. But the inspector is right. If Galloway didn’t actually kill Watts, he’s not really relevant, except I can’t shake the question of why he dismissed Miss Van Eyck like that.”

“You’re thinking he gambled with Watts and was covering for his buddy,” Terrell said.

“Yes, exactly. But even then, it seems like a very long line between that and his being found dead a week ago. That’s more than ten years later.”

“You’re right there,” Terrell said, popping the last of his sandwich into his mouth. “He’s been lying low being a respectable husband and father, but maybe he hasn’t really changed, and sooner or later he was going to want to relive his youth or something by suddenly going after his work buddy’s daughter, Ada.”

Ames nodded. “Exactly. So in that situation, Craig Finch would possibly want to kill him, and so might his own wife for that matter.”

“But don’t forget, he decides to revisit the Van Eyck garage, wanting to know if Tina ever talked. I wish we knew why.”

“I need more coffee today. I have not been sleeping well,” Ames said, lifting his cup toward April, who was wiping the counter. “Thanks, April.”

April nodded, filling Terrell’s cup as well. “Care to know about our pies today, Constable Terrell?”

“That I would,” Terrell said.

“Apple and pumpkin.”

“Pumpkin sounds good. My gran used to make it. Let’s see how this holds up.”

“Really,” Ames said when April had retreated to fetch the pie. “You two are as obvious as the side of a barn.” And on consideration, he wondered if it wasn’t such a bad idea. He and April had had a brief relationship, which he had ended